he would be a great lawyer, he must first
consent to become a great drudge.” Sevilla
asks the trial attorney to flag any issues in
the trial. Then he reads through volumes
of trial material, doing what he calls “fact
shoveling”: dividing all the relevant issues
into legal categories. Then he researches to
see if the category is worthy of inclusion in
the appeal.

The description of his process maybe straightforward, but it obscures thepassion behind it.

In his office, Sevilla keeps a plaque
with the words “Freedom: A Right Worth
Fighting For,” which was given to him by
Thad Jesperson, a popular elementary
school teacher who spent two and a half
years in prison on child abuse charges.

“[Jesperson] was a warm, wonderfulguy who did all these extra things to bringeducation to children,” Sevilla says. “Hewould build a dinosaur model on his owntime and then bury it in the sandbox so thekids could have an excavation.” Despite thesweetness of the scene he’s just painted, aquiet rage percolates when Sevilla recalls theway the accusations in the case escalated. “Itwent from, originally, ‘He didn’t do anything,’to charges that he molested children in anopen classroom, with parents and monitoringcoming in all the time,” Sevilla says. “And noone saw anything!”Sevilla won his release in 2007.

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE

that, even as a kid, when he and his dadwatched the Gillette boxing matches on TVtogether, Sevilla rooted for the underdog.

After graduating from Santa Clara Law in
1969, Sevilla went to The George Washington
University to study urban law, or “poor
people’s law,” as he puts it. His master’s
thesis examined what happened when two
large federal programs collided. Specifically,
he found that the federal highway program
always trumped the model city’s program,
so highways always went through poor areas
that were meant to be upgraded, “dividing
and destroying neighborhoods with rivers of
assault,” he says.

At one point, while researching histhesis, Sevilla called someone at thehighway program at 4: 30 p.m. on a Friday.“‘You know,’” Sevilla recalls the personsaying, “‘we’re only about 20 minutes fromMonday, so why don’t we continue then.’”Sevilla adds: “I learned a lot about thebureaucratic mentality. He was so fixatedon the 5 o’clock departure that it’s a goodthing I wasn’t there in person—I wouldhave been trampled under all the peoplerushing to leave.”After graduating in 1971, and returning toCalifornia to serve as a federal defender inSan Diego, Sevilla got involved in his ownbureaucratic battle. John Cleary, the headof the San Diego office, was a tough bosswho demanded long hours, but this didn’tsit well with some of his young, underpaidunderlings. In his second year, Cleary says,“Several of the attorneys decided to revoltand overthrow the dictator. They weren’t allthat smart, so they enrolled Chuck as theiradvocate because they couldn’t write aswell as him.”Sevilla, a workaholic himself, didn’thave a beef with Cleary but took up thecharge in documents he prepared for theorganization’s board of directors. “[He]raised all my defects in glaring color,”Cleary says, “pointing them out forcefullyand persuasively.”After many months, Cleary won thebattle. As punishment, he promoted Sevillato be his chief trial lawyer. He simplyrespected his ethics, recognized that hewas the best candidate, and never held itagainst him that he tried to get him axed.